Harris County’s new warehouse space will be built in an old cannery on Canal Street between Lockwood and Wayside, about three miles from the county’s downtown courthouse complex. The District Clerk’s Office is developing plans for transporting files and employees between the warehouse and the courthouse complex. less

Harris County’s new warehouse space will be built in an old cannery on Canal Street between Lockwood and Wayside, about three miles from the county’s downtown courthouse complex. The District Clerk’s ... more

Image 2 of 3

Renowned Chicano artist Leo Tanguma painted “The Rebirth of Our Nationality” in 1973 on a building that Harris County bought in 2012 and will use for storing records, including court files. The mural will be restored when the building is renovated. less

Renowned Chicano artist Leo Tanguma painted “The Rebirth of Our Nationality” in 1973 on a building that Harris County bought in 2012 and will use for storing records, including court files. The mural will ... more

Image 3 of 3

District Clerk Daniel says county will add

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

The District Clerk’s Office will gain more storage space and a city neighborhood will feature a restored block-long mural by a renowned Chicano artist when renovation of an old warehouse on Canal Street is completed.

The DCO will shutter its storage operation in the old county jail at the downtown intersection of Franklin and Caroline, a facility that some staffers believe has made them prone to illnesses, and is expected to move into the three-story, efficient warehouse in 2017.

District Clerk Chris Daniel said, “Retaining copies of all filed documents is an important function of the District Clerk’s Office. The additional space will help greatly to support that mission. And the space will be more suitable for my staff.”

Mark Combs, the District Clerk’s director of network services, said, “We need to have a space people can work in and feel comfortable.”

The restored warehouse will provide a cultural boost in the East End when the peeling, faded, 4,000-square-foot mural “The Rebirth of Our Nationality” depicting the heritage of the once vibrant Chicano movement is restored. Artist Leo Tanguma’s mural, painted in 1973, was intended to be a political statement about the importance of Chicano identity.

In the center of the mural, two Chicanos stand by a large red flower that rises from a bed of skulls. A message no longer visible will be restored above their heads: “To become aware of our history is to become aware of our singularity.” These types of murals were common among Hispanic communities when the Chicano movement was at its peak in the 1970s.

Eric Blaylock, project manager for Harris County Public Infrastructure Department, said the county has not chosen an artist to restore the mural. Mural restoration will not begin until renovation of the warehouse interior is nearly complete.

The Canal Street warehouse, bought by the county in 2012 for $3 million, also will house storage space for the District Attorney’s Office and the Precinct 6 Constable’s Office. The building is on Canal between Lockwood and South Wayside, about three miles southeast of the District Clerk’s Office.

Inactive case files are stored in the old jail. Although they are inactive, the cases could become active if, say, a child custody issue arose out of a divorce decree handed down a decade earlier.

The warehouse also will be used as a repository for some active cases. Active records will be brought out of storage and shuttled to courts.

Some evidence from capital murder trials and high-profile cases is now stored in the old jail. Knives, machetes, swords, baseball bats, crowbars that have been used in murders and assaults will be moved out of the evidence room at the old jail into a new storage area on Canal Street.

The county bought the building because the old jail does not meet the District Clerk’s needs and the DCO needed more space to store the hundreds of thousands of inactive and other case files and documents housed in the old jail.

“We look forward to moving our records from a facility that was neither designed for, nor intended to be, a records facility,” said DCO Chief Deputy Kevin Mauzy. “The Canal Street building is being turned into a warehouse designed and equipped for the purpose of holding and accessing records. It will provide much better working conditions for our employees, and it can better accommodate the public that accesses and utilizes those records.”